You're a good manager, right? Positive. Upbeat. You tell
your employees how much you appreciate them. You implement
recognition and rewards for a job well done. Heck, you even tell
them what they're doing right before you tell them what
they're doing wrong. But what you thought you knew about
positive reinforcement may be all wrong. And what you think
you know might hurt you. In fact, it probably already does.

Entrepreneur.com: Your book says that "positive
reinforcement is the most powerful interpersonal tool a person can
use to improve a personal relationship...yet it is the most
misunderstood and misused." Why is it so powerful?

Aubrey Daniels: Positive reinforcement is the only thing
that happens following a behavior that causes people to want to do
what they've just done again. When someone does something and
they get negatively reinforced-they do something in order to avoid
some negative consequence, [which] can be something as simple as a
frown or getting yelled at-what that does is causes them to do just
enough to get by. Positive reinforcement accelerates performance,
so the more you get, the more you want to do the behavior.
That's why it's powerful. And it's so powerful that if
you do it at the wrong time or in the wrong way, you'll get
more of the wrong thing.

Entrepreneur.com: What are some of the wrong ways
managers use it and what are the effects?

Daniels: One of the most common ways that people misuse
[positive reinforcement] is they don't understand that it's
very personal. What's effective for you as a reinforcer is
going to be different for me. Think of positive reinforcers as:
What would people spend their free time and money to be able to do
or have? If you could do anything you wanted to do at a given
moment, what would you choose to do? That would identify what would
be a reinforcer for you.

There are a lot of things that don't cost money that are
positive reinforcers, like attention and verbal praise and those
kinds of things. But those aren't reinforcers from
everybody to everybody. [One person may covet] praise, and
another person may despise it.

Entrepreneur.com: What are some of the dos and don'ts
of positive reinforcement?

Daniels:Do it immediately. Effective
reinforcement begins to diminish almost immediately after the
behavior occurred, so the best time to reinforce is when you catch
someone in the act. If you do something that's meritorious at
one point in time, your behavior doesn't stop. And often, by
the time somebody gets around to recognizing it, your attitude may
have deteriorated, your behavior may have deteriorated.

In my own life, I get in a situation where at some point
I'll say to my wife, "Hey, you've had your hair fixed
differently." And guess what the response is. "Well,
it's about time you noticed." I'm trying to do
something positive, but I'm getting punished for it because my
timing was so bad. So when organizations use rewards and six months
later the person gets it, it has a dubious effect on the behavior
that occurred six months ago.

Establish a relationship. The first thing you've got
to do is establish yourself as a positive reinforcer, and the way
you do that is by simply pairing reinforcement. In other words, if
you find something that's important to the other person, then
they tend to like you better as a result of that. If I were to say
something to you like, "I like that dress" and you like
the dress, then you're probably going to like me better because
I said that.

There are a lot of very nice people who are very poor
supervisors and managers, but there's no truly effective
manager, over the long haul, who is not also well liked.

Don't pair it with negativity. There are a lot of
people who will say something positive and then take it away by
either asking for more or qualifying it with a "but."
"You did a good job, but.." What's the net
effect of that? So don't use "but" when reinforcing,
and don't attempt to punish and reinforce at the same time.
There's no research I'm aware of that says that's
effective. There's a lot that says it's ineffective, and
yet it's the most common way people are taught to correct
performance.

Entrepreneur.com: Can you ever reinforce too much?

Daniels: If you do it wrong, one time is it too much. If
you do it correctly, you can never do it too much. If I'm still
playing golf when I'm 90, I don't think I'll ever get
tired of hearing, "Good shot." Because I know that
it's an accomplishment. I can see the shot and I know its good
so it doesn't bother me that someone says "Good
shot." But a lot of people-because they do it
wrong-have gotten the idea that you can do it too much.

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